HTC One S Review

One of the best camera interfaces

The quality and detail in the images are really good, especially in outdoor shots. The LED flash comes in handy for low light shooting but the flash is not very powerful so make sure your subjects aren’t further than 5ft. Video recording maxes out at 1080p and supports stereo sound recording along with video stabilization. 

Sample shots

Plenty of depth of field effects make for some stunning photos

Another outdoor shot

Shot in burst mode. Notice there's no blurring anywhere

Macro shots are good but it does have trouble focusing on smaller objects

Battery Life
The HTC One S is fitted with a 1650mAh battery that lasted nearly 7 hours in our video drain test. This is not bad but could have been better if it had the S4 chip inside. In our loop test, the smartphone lasted through one and half hours of calling, two hours of video and four hours of audio. All tests were performed under the automatic brightness mode.

Verdict and Price in India
The HTC One S is available in the market for Rs.33,900 although you can find it online for a little less. At this price, it goes up against Sony’s Xperia S and Samsung’s Galaxy Note and between these two the Xperia S is the stronger competitor to the HTC One S since both are focused around multimedia and imaging. Between the two, I’d have to go with the One S as the better all-rounder. Now before you get all fired up and head for the comments section, let me make this very clear -  the One S does have a slight fringing issue in the AMOLED screen and yes, it’s an outrage that we have to put up with the S3 chipset instead of the brand new S4. However, I wouldn’t call these two little chinks a deal breaker as the One S is still a very good phone, so there's no need to disregard it for this reason alone. I do wish HTC had launched it under 30K though, as it currently feels a tad expensive. If you are paranoid about having the S4 chipset then by all means source it from elsewhere or wait for Qualcomm to get their act together. For the rest of you looking for a slim, super-fast and very capable Android, I highly recommend the HTC One S.